Down the Security Rabbithole, The BlogThis is a collection of my thoughts and ideas, and anything expressed here is unrelated to anything in real life and does not represent opinions of clients, employers or colleagues. If it feels a little bit like stream-of-consciousness, it probably is.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Register.com DDoS'd off the Internet

The hot story the last 24 hours has been behemoth DNS registrar Register.com. They have been, apparently, getting pounded by a distributed denial of service over the past several (24+) hours, and I can count myself among the domains down.

The Inquirer (INQ) is carrying the story here, with little other coverage, oddly enough.

What is going on at Register.com? I'm losing business as seconds turn to minutes turn to hours turn to days now... I'm raging mad and I can't even get their overwhelmed tech-support folks to pick up the phone!

If you've been affected by the massive DDoS - leave a comment either here or on the INQ's site... Regiser.com needs to know this is not acceptable.

4 comments:

I'm the pastor of a small congregation...our site's been down pretty much all day, along with our email service. Fool that I am, I've also got the address for my primary blog through register.com. Remind me about the whole "eggs in one basket" thing next time I'm fool enough to do that.

@Nick D: Thanks for the comment... awesome that I have a reader from Register.com staff. If you have a minute, leave a comment with your contact info - would love to interview you or someone in your org with what went down, how, and what you did about it... if possible!! My readers would love to know.

Web.com now owns Register.com -- the sale was finalized this past summer. However, Register.com continues to have problems. They were attacked -- AGAIN -- on November 12, November 13, November 14, 2010. When I contacted the company to get reimbursed for the money paid to them to KEEP ME IN BUSINESS -- they said "it isn't out fault."

This is what is posted on Register.com's website: "with our 100% Uptime Guarantee," -- which, as I have said before, IS WORTHLESS!! Web.com don't fall into the same rats nest where you pulled Register.com from. RESPECT YOUR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS!! And, when compensation is requested, COMPENSATE!! - Kirby Sommerswww.kirbysommers.com

About Me

Technology is pushing us along and becoming pervasive in our lives orders of magnitude faster than we can fully comprehend the ramifications of these changes.

Technology promises to change our lives, but at what price? The more heavily our daily lives rely on technology the greater the impact of a breach or a malicious attack. Our toasters can't kill us ... yet, but I suspect the day is coming.

As someone who has been involved in the defensive enterprise side of security for well over a decade, I emplore you to join me and focus our efforts on building better, more resilient systems which can not only support and enrich our lives, but also stand up to misuse and attack better.

Remember, prevention is a myth the snakeoil sales man sells. Real security comes from the ability to detect, respond, and resolve critical issues in a meaningful way.